Brett Foxwell

United States of America

Brett Foxwell is a Bay Area–based artist specializing in stop-motion animation and world-building. An engineer, designer, builder, and animator, he creates films, creatures, and environments that reveal a deep attention to material, structure, and craft. His practice spans both narrative and experimental short films, often constructed from physical materials such as metal, wood, and organic matter. In works such as Fabricated and WoodSwimmer, he transforms raw materials into immersive visual systems, using camera movement and animation to reveal hidden landscapes within steel, glass, or hardwood.

At the core of his practice is a fascination with the latent structures of the physical world. Through meticulous and often labor-intensive processes, he uncovers unexpected universes within familiar materials, from the diversity of leaf forms in LeafPresser—for which he collected and photographed thousands of leaves—to the internal geometries of natural and fabricated matter. Alongside his independent work, he has contributed to large-scale productions and collaborations, including the construction of stop-motion armatures for projects such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Book of Boba Fett, extending his material-driven approach into cinematic and commercial contexts.


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Wood Swimmer - Vertical

Wood_Swimmer_-_Vertical_Brett_Foxwell_Photography.mp4

A strange journey through a very familiar substance, wood.

“I became fascinated with the possibilities of a sci-fi world based on the alien forms to be found within this material that grows all around us and that we sometimes take for granted. While brainstorming this world, I came upon the concept of the WoodSwimmer. It was a challenging technique, but once perfected, I was able to shoot short sequences that move the camera through chunks of hardwood, burls and branches. The result is hauntingly beautiful imagery that is both abstract and unquestionably real. In the twisting growth rings and the swirling rays, a new universe is revealed.”

technique

photography

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portrait

duration

01:16

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n/a

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